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A Jupiter 85mm f2 on an Olympus EPL5

The popularity of the review of this lovely lens back in February on a Canon 60D’s APSC sensor made me wonder how well it fares on a smaller Micro Four Thirds camera, as some readers are obviously interested (all three of you!). The 2x ‘crop factor’ makes this a 190mm equivalent, so getting into mid telephoto territory. All shot on an unseasonably warm and bright winter’s day, here are the results.

The ‘brute’ on the EPL5.. The adaptors are a Micro Four Thirds to Canon EF then to M42 thread mount (the lens mount of the Helios). You may notice that the lens isn’t quite lined up – due to the cheapness of the EF to M42 adaptor!

The Olympus EPL5 is a very nicely built 16Mp mirrorless interchangeable lens camera, and it usually has an ultralight Lensbaby Sweet 35 ‘welded’ to it’s front. Surprisingly the weight of the all metal bodied Helios feels quite reassuring on the small camera body, and doesn’t seem overbalanced, but it’s close. The use of the EPL5’s (optionally attached) grip helps handling a lot.

In terms of appearance, it looks exactly like it was made on heavy machinery in a russian industrial complex (it was – probably in Krasnogorsk – ‘Made in the USSR’ is stamped on the underside), with basic aperture and focus markings and an intermittently milled focus ring. Though a bit of a brute I really like it, and the results justify it’s use. There’s obviously no autofocus, and centre weighted metering should be used, along with RAW as exposures can be a little random.

That fantastic bokeh reappears on the little Oly! This is quite encouraging. As with the Canon 60D the depth of field close up at f2 is razor thin.

On the Canon 60D (below) the lens produced some odd ‘swirly’ bokeh, and a orange colour cast. On the Micro Four Thirds sensor the results are more conventional without any colour shift, but still very good.

On the 60D and an APSC sensor

Generally the results weren’t as spectacularly good on the EPL5 as on the 60D. Then towards the end of the test my brain engaged and the reason is obvious:-

On a 60D (1.6 ‘crop factor’) this is a 135mm equivalent, on the EPL5 (2x ‘crop factor’) it’s closer to 200mm. This means to frame the same shot I’m standing further away with the Oly, and as depth of field increases the further away a lens is focussed (or conversely narrows the closer a lens is focussed) the extreme depth of field effects on the 60D just weren’t being allowed to happen on the EPL5 for the same shot.

Though they don’t have the same ‘erased away’ appearance as the 60D shots, this is still pretty good – much better than a kit lens.

This isn’t a macro lens as such, but with a minimal focus distance of 80cm and a 200mm equiv focal length you can get quite close :-

Close up (a few feet), and the colours are great.

All in all then, a pretty good lens for the EPL5, even though getting the special ‘look’ of those images on the 60D is more difficult. It’s certainly better than a kit lens on the EPL5 for achieving some decent bokeh – more or less everything is in focus at most apertures with the 14-42 kit lens.